Power from Above
The Spirit Comes at Pentecost
Acts 2:1-21
Sometimes the most foolish sounding ideas turn out to produce the most extraordinary results. Listen to these real statements made about people and products.
•In 1876, a Western Union internal memo read this, “This ’telephone’ [thing] has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
•Marechal Ferdinand Foch, [French] Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre, said this prior to WWII: “Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
•H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, in 1927 said of the new so-called “talkies” movies: "Who wants to hear actors talk?"
•Here’s a statement: "But what...is it [possibly] good for?" That statement was made by an engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, about a brand new invention known as the microchip.
•Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment corp., said in 1977 "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
•In 1962 Decca Recording Co. rejected an obscure music group by saying: “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” That groups was called, let me get this straight: the Beatles.
Sometimes from the smallest of things come the greatest of movements. People often misevaluate the potential for success.
•In A.D. 30 they were probably saying something like this: “Their leader has just been crucified; his followers are scattered. They are a bunch of spineless cowards anyway. The Jesus movement is over. It will never get off the ground.
How wrong they were. The movement that began with a man named Jesus of Nazareth sparked a revolution which is still going on today – a revolution that has reached every corner of the globe and transformed the lives of billions of people.
Last week we began a new series on the book of Acts. The book about how Jesus’ followers took his message and changed their world.
•By learning the lessons of this book we can see how we, too, can change our world with the Good News about Jesus Christ.
If you were with us last week you know that Jesus told his disciples to wait in Jerusalem, because God was going to pour out his Spirit. The Holy Spirit would provide them with the power to accomplish their task.
•This morning we are going to look at the event which sparked the beginning of the Church, pouring out of the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost.
•This is the birthday of the Church.
Turn with me to Acts, chapter 2. Read Acts 2:1-21. Let’s pray.
This event takes place on the Jewish Feast Day of Pentecost.
•Pentecost was also called the “Feast of Harvest” and it was a harvest festival, to celebrate the wheat harvest. Bread made from the first grain harvested would be offered to the LORD as an offering of thanksgiving for the harvest. (It was kind of their Thanksgiving Day)
•Pentecost means “fiftieth.” That’s because the festival occurs 50 days after Passover. Now remember, Jesus was crucified on Passover, so this event occurs fifty days after that. If you do your math: Jesus rose from the dead after 3 days, then spent 40 days with his disciples, before ascending. That leaves about a week before Pentecost. So the events that occur here happened about a week after Jesus ascended to Heaven.
Something else interesting about the Feast of Pentecost, is that in later Judaism it became a celebration of the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai.
•Now we’ve got to do some OT history here. You can’t understand the NT without knowing its OT background.
•Fortunately, many people even if they don’t know the Bible the basic history from movies like The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston (made a great Moses), and more recently the The Prince of Egypt.
•These events are described in the OT book of Exodus describes how God delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt. Moses led them out of Egypt, through the Red Sea to Mount Sinai.
•There at Mount Sinai God made a Covenant and gave them a Law and made them their people.
•We could call the Exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai the “Birth of a Nation.” Because Israel was established as God’s people at Mount Sinai. In fact, God says that. He says in Hosea 11:1, “Out of Egypt I brought my Son.” Egypt was the womb that gave birth to his nation Israel.
But you see there is an interesting parallel here: If the Law at Mount Sinai was the birth of nation Israel, and Pentecost celebrated that event, it is appropriate that God would give birth to the Church, his New People on that very day.
We talk about the Old and the New Testaments. (Front part and back part). Do you know what that means? I say “turn to Acts” in the NT. Or turn to Genesis in the OT.
•The word “Testament” means “Covenant” or Agreement between two parties.
•The OT is about God’s covenant with his people Israel. The covenant he made at Mount Sinai. The NT is about the New Covenant. The one God made through Jesus through his death and resurrection.
•Just as Israel celebrated the Old Covenant at Passover and at Pentecost, so we have a time when we celebrate the New Covenant. Do you know when that it?
•It is at communion, or the Lord’s Supper. At his Last Supper Jesus said, This cup is the New Covenant in my blood. Through his death on the cross, he inaugurated the New Covenant.
What this means is that here at CABC we are part of the New Covenant people of God.
•We don’t live under the Old Covenant made with Israel, but under the New Covenant made with the Church, the people of God in the present Age
But this “New Covenant” is not some new idea made up by Christians. (A bunch of old geezers got together and said, “Let’s make a new covenant.”) It was prophesied; it was predicted already in the Old Covenant.
I want you to see this. Hold your place here in Acts and turn to Jeremiah. It’s in the Old Covenant. Jeremiah 31:31 “The time is coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD.
You see Israel broke the Old Covenant. They were like an unfaithful wife, who had an affair; who had destroyed the relationship. So God said he was going to make a brand new and better covenant; a permanent one.
Verse 33 “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34 No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the LORD. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
Look at the benefits of the new covenant.
•First, God was going to write his Law on their hearts. No longer would they be dependant on long lists of dos and don’ts. (It’s like when you are first learning how to do something; say work your VCR [some of you still don’t know how to work your VCR]. But you follow all the directions step by step. But in time, you’ve got it all in here. You do it innately. God was going to write his Law in their hearts.
•Secondly, is they would all know the LORD, in an intimate way. No longer would they have
•Third, they would have free and complete forgiveness.
How could people have all of these things? They could have them only in one way: Because God himself would come to live within them.
•Through the permanent indwelling of his Spirit.
•God promised that when he inaugurated his New Covenant, he would give his people his Spirit.
Turn back to Acts. That is the passage that Peter quotes. He reads from the OT prophet Joel 2:28-32, who predicted that the coming of this New Covenant, this New Age, would begin with the pouring out of God’s Spirit – that is what Jeremiah means by the Law written on their hearts.
•Look at verse 17 of Acts 2 again, “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
•God’s Spirit would come to live inside of believers. They would then have God’s Law written in their hearts (the Spirit’s guiding); the would know God (he would be permanently living with them); he would make them new (all their sins would be forgiven.
So Israel read these passages and longed for the day when God would make a new Covenant; write his Law on their hearts; give them his Spirit on all people.
•It would be a whole New Age. It is called many things: “The Age of Salvation,” “The Age of the New Covenant,” the “Last Days,” The Age of the Spirit.”
•Now Peter announces “That day has arrived.”
The Coming of the Spirit at Pentecost means:
1. The Age of Salvation (the “Last Days”) has begun
Many books today touting the coming of the end times.
•But according to the Bible, the end times began 2000 years ago.
•Now, don’t get me wrong. Those days may be coming to a close very soon...I hope so. I hope Christ returns in my lifetime.
But what I’m saying is you don’t have to wait for then to experience true joy of salvation.
•You don’t have to wait till then to receive God’s presence in your life.
•You don’t have to wait till then to experience true and complete forgiveness.
T- Let’s look at the events which happen to herald the coming of the Holy Spirit.
(1) In verse 2 we see the sound like the blowing of a violent wind: 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven
•Both the Hebrew and Greek words for Spirit can also mean “wind,” and so rushing wind is symbol of the presence of the Spirit.
(2) The second thing we see in verse 3 are tongues of fire burning on top of the believers. They must have looked like candles. What’s that all about?
•Fire in Scripture symbolizes the presence of God. Do you remember what happened to Moses? God reveals himself through a burning bush. Then, when Israel is in the wilderness God protects the nation with a pillar of fire going before them. It symbolizes the presence of God.
(3) Then they begin speaking in other “tongues” or languages. Verse 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
•Now there is debate today about the nature of the gift of tongues; some people believe it is a kind of prayer language; we are not going to deal with that issue today; we’ll study that another time.
•But it is obvious here in this passage what this gift is. It is the ability to speak in a language that you have never formally learned.
Look at verse 6: When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language.
Verse 8: Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language?
Verse 11: — we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”
Suddenly everyone is hearing the Gospel in their own language.
•This is a powerful image; because language is something that brings people together.
•If you have ever spent time in a place where no one understood your language, you know just how frustrating and difficult this can be.
•(Roxanne involved in sign language; went to a sign language function, everyone was signing; I felt stupid, but also quite alienated, an outsider).
•Language brings people together; and language differences break them apart, causing confusion and conflict.
•We have hilarious examples from our time in Scotland, some of which I can’t repeat. Like when we were traveling all night on a vacation with another couple. We arrived at the port we were to embark from. We were grubby after a night. The wife of the couple turned to me and said, “Would you like to go splash your face in the toilet.” I said, “I certainly would not. No matter how grubby I felt.”
Native, tribal peoples often know two languages, their own native tongue and then a common trade language.
•If you speak with Bible translators like Wycliffe translators you will find that their goal is not usually to translate the Bible into just the trade language.
•The reason is, if you want to speak to people’s hearts, you have to know their mother tongue. There is something special about an individual’s native tongue. It is the thing that gives them identity. It is the language of kinship. Ultimately, it is the language of truth. So the key is to translate into the language of the heart.
These people on the Day of Pentecost began hearing the Gospel not in the common trade language, Greek, but in their own native tongue. It spoke to their heart.
•The message is that God is now making his message known to all peoples in their own languages.
•He is breaking down the barriers that divide.
There is an OT counterpart to the Day of Pentecost. It is the tower of Babel, back in Genesis 11. In that day, we are told that the people of the world originally spoke a single language.
•And they had great plans. They would build a great tower and unify against God they would make a name for themselves.
•The text says God came down and confused their languages; created many languages. The people couldn’t communicate so they were scattered around the world.
Now why did God do that? Because he knew that if the people stayed together, they would become completely corrupt. The permeating power of sin would work its way through everyone. People would once again become completely evil.
•If you don’t believe in the permeating power of sin, put two siblings together in the back of the car. “Jamie touched me!” “Well buddy touched me first!” “Well Jamie took my toy!” Sin is contagious. If one person catches it; it will spread like fire. First its one sibling; then the other; then mom or dad is losing it.
•I was at a children’s musical at a church and I noticed that the students were lined up boy, girl, boy, girl. I thought, “How nice and symmetrical.” I was quickly informed, “Symmetrical my foot, that’s how the teachers keep them from misbehaving.”
God divided the nations at Babel to prevent humanity from presenting an arrogant and united front against him. He wanted to separate for himself a people who would remain pure, and who would love and serve him.
•So he called out a nation, Israel, to be his special people; his unique and pure people distinct from the nations of the world.
•The OT is all about God’s consolidation on one people; his separation. Israel was called to come out from the rest of the nations and to be distinct, to be different.
•Babel symbolized God’s separation of the nations.
Pentecost, however, reverses that.
•Now salvation has been achieved; the Messiah has come from Israel, and has suffered and died for our sins; he has been raised from the dead.
•The time for consolidation and separation is over. Now is the time for expansion and unification.
•Whereas before, God’s people of the Old Covenant were to form a holy huddle and protect themselves from outside influences, the people of the New Covenant are to do just the opposite. They are to reach out and bring others in. To incorporate all peoples into the one people of God. To be light; to be salt.
•To break down the things that divide and separate.
Look at the quotation of Joel again in verse 17: In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
The Church is now facing outward. Calling people from every tribe, and nation, and language group to be part of the one great unified people of God.
The role of the Church; the role of the Gospel is to break down the barriers that divide us.
I read an extraordinary story, you may have seen it too.
On February 28, 1996 the all-black New Liberty Baptist Church of Tyler, Alabama, burned to the ground. It was amid the rash of national news about black and white churches burning in the Southeast. To the tiny church, this was just one more tragic example of racial hatred in an area long known for hatred.
•The people of the church rallied and began to rebuild. Volunteers were clearing the last of the debris from the church that once stood, preparing to begin construction on a new building.
•But now the work had stopped. This particular morning was special because the church had a guest. His name is Christopher Deer, and he is coming to apologize to the church, because he was the arsonist.
•He has a speech prepared in his head, but he can’t get it out. He can only blurt out, "I’m sorry," before he dissolves into tears. And then Pastor L.C. Pettway put his arms around the shoulders of the sobbing white boy. "It’s OK," he says, "You don’t have to say anything. Your tears tell it all. God has forgiven you, and I forgive you." Rev. Pettway turns to Chris’s parents. "I know you have had many sleepless nights over this. Now," he says, "you can sleep."
•Later, Pastor Pettway and his congregation demonstrated their forgiveness by appearing in the courtroom where Chris was being tried for arson. They came as character witnesses on behalf of the accused.
•Six months later an overflow crowd is jammed into the brand new church. The church was built by members of the arsoned church, a small, rural, African-American congregation, and by members of a white, suburban Presbyterian church--Chris Deer’s church. Young and old, black and white, Baptist and Presbyterian, they are there to celebrate the rebirth of this Church.
What could possibly break down hundreds of years of hatred, of persecution, of pain and suffering? What could break down the barriers that divide?
Only the coming of the Holy Spirit, who brings people together today, just as it did at Pentecost.
And if at Pentecost all nations were brought together into one Church, then he can bring us together as a Church, to accomplish great things.
David Russell, "The Church And The Spirit" (see also Internet article)’
You know we launched a Church here at CABC two weeks ago on Easter Sunday. A Vietnamese Church. Pastor Curt was there to help launch it. He preached the sermon through an interpreter.
•Coming off Easter Sunday, he was tired, thought of it as one more church responsibility.
•But he said when he got there he was overwhelmed by the Spirit of the event.
•Vietnamese dignitaries and church leaders from all over San Diego; 26 people joined the church.
•He said, “It reminded me that what began in Acts 2 is still going on. The LORD is still pouring out his Spirit. Churches are still being born; lives are still being changed.
T- The Coming of the Spirit at Pentecost means that:
3. Believers are now empowered to take the message of salvation to the ends of the earth.
To break down the barriers that divide us.
The miracle of tongues was just the beginning. On the Day of Pentecost, the disciples were empowered by the Spirit to go out and boldly preach the Word of God.
•Empowered to do miracles in Jesus’ name.
•Empowered to love their enemies.
•Empowered to face life’s greatest crises; like suffering and persecution; like financial loss; like the pain of illness.
And so do we. We have the same Spirit today.
•Same power to face suffering; financial loss; debilitating illness and cancer; broken relationships.
•If we can come together and support one another by one Spirit.
There is a great Peanuts cartoon in which Lucy demands that Linus change TV channels.
•"What makes you think you can walk right in here and take over?" asks Linus. "These five fingers," says Lucy. "Individually they’re nothing but when I curl them together like this into a single unit, they form a weapon that is terrible to behold."
•"Which channel do you want?" asks Linus. Turning away, he looks at his fingers and says, "Why can’t you guys get organized like that?"
That’s a question we have to ask ourselves this morning.
•We have that power, too. If we can stay focused on the same goals and the same purpose. We can accomplish great things for God.
•If we will come together in the power of the one Spirit, nothing can break us apart.
•That means meeting the needs of those around us.
-Setting aside pride, selfish ambition, wrong motives
-Looking out for the good of the body.
•Pushing forward to complete our 20/20/20 vision
